White Heat (8 page)

    When
Stevie reappeared with the tea, he instructed his constable to post a couple of
notices at the mayor's office and at the store pointing out that, with
immediate effect, all dogs allowed to roam free in the community at night would
be mistaken for wolves and shot.

    Stevie
nodded and switched on his computer. Moments later he looked up. 'Hey, boss,
remind me how to create a new file?'

    Derek
raised his eyes to heaven and went over. After years of petitioning he had finally
persuaded the RCMP supply centre to send up a couple of computers. He'd
immediately fallen in love with them because they cut the time he spent doing
administration in half, which gave him more time for his beloved wildlife
patrols. After Misha left, he'd set up a satellite internet connection and
discovered a world of lemming research at his fingertips: Finnish surveys of
population cycles, a paper from Norway on snowy-owl predation, some US stuff on
the implications of global warming on subniveal wintering. That was when he'd
realized that his interest in lemmings wasn't simply a personal quirk. There
were plenty of others interested in them too, proper scientists, people with
more qualifications than he'd ever have. Aside from being fascinating in
themselves, the hardy little rodents were a barometer of climate change. People
could snicker, but lemming research was on the cutting edge.

    Derek
had tried to encourage Stevie to share in his new love for technology, but,
despite being younger than Derek, Stevie had never really got it. In his view,
computers were basically sinister, like the spirits of rogue ancestors.
Constable Killik understood they were part of the police landscape now, but it
wasn't a part he was keen to frequent.

    Derek
brought up a blank page and returned to his desk.

    'By
the way,' he said, 'what
did
Tom Silliq call you?'

    'You
won't like it.'

    Derek
gave him a look that said, go on, amaze me.

    'He
said I allow myself to be bossed about by an Indian lemming fart.'

    Derek
laughed bleakly. For a small minority in Kuujuaq, he'd always been an object of
derision on account of his mongrel blood: part
qalunaat,
part Inuit and,
almost unforgivably, part Cree, the Inuit's natural enemy. He'd grown up with
the idea that he was someone who probably didn't belong anywhere, but that
didn't mean he liked being reminded of the fact. He drew out his carton of
cigarettes then, thinking better of it, got up from his desk and went into the
radio room to make his usual morning calls. He didn't want Stevie to see he was
rattled.

    Since
the cutbacks the Kuujuaq detachment had been given the communities of Hell
Gate, Jakeman Fiord and the scientific station on Devon Island to police, in
addition to the original beat of Kuujuaq, Eureka and Autisaq. There wasn't much
at Hell Gate or Jakeman Fiord - a couple of tiny weather stations, a few
hunting camps open mostly in the summer, and, at Jakeman, a small geologic
survey, but he was expected to make contact with someone from each community at
least once every other day and to be prepared to fly out at short notice should
anything untoward happen.

    Other
than the death of Felix Wagner, nothing untoward had happened in quite some
time and Derek's calls had taken on a slightly desperate air. It was not that
he was willing anything bad to befall any of the five Arctic settlements and
the science station under his wing, it was just that the lack of an event
calling for his intervention or assistance fed the feelings of impotence and
redundancy that had already been brought on by Misha's departure.

    To
amuse himself, he'd invented a series of rubrics to determine in which order to
make the calls: alphabetical one day, then the next in reverse order of the
number of vowels in the name. Today, he decided to go for a simple reverse
alphabetical, which meant starting with Jakeman and working his way to Autisaq.

    He
sat down in the caribou-leather radio chair and donned the headphones.

    'Hey,
Derek,' a voice crackled through the static from Jakeman, 'you're wasting your
time again.'

    He
made his way through the list, taking a break for a cigarette at Eureka.
Nothing happening anywhere. His final call was to Autisaq. A familiar voice
answered.

    'Joe Inukpuk.
Haven't heard you on radio in a while.' Derek smiled to himself. He'd always
liked that boy. They bonded over their support for Jordin Tootoo, the first
Inuit pro ice-hockey player, who played for the Nashville Predators. On a trip
south one time, Derek had bought Joe a Predators thermos and hat with the
sabre-tooth tiger logo. The boy had worn the hat until it fell apart.

    'I've
been busy at the nursing station, sir.'

    'Aha,'
Palliser said. Word had got around that Joe was hoping to go into nursing
training. Unusual for an Inuk. Still, he was to be admired for his ambition,
not just for himself, but for his community. It was time the territory of
Nunavut started training Inuit professionals instead of relying on southerners
working short-term contracts.

    'See
the Predators game?'

    'Oh
man, it was a smash,' Joe said.

    'Tootoo,
what a star!'

    'Too,
too much.' It was their little joke, one Joe had first alighted on gleefully at
the age of fourteen. They'd been telling it regularly in the six years since.

    'Everything
OK where you are?' Derek remembered this was supposed to be an official call.

    A
pause on the line. 'Sure.'

    Derek
heard voices in the background. The boy didn't sound sure. 'Really?'

    'Just
one thing, sir.' There was a hissing on the airwaves, interference probably,
either that or Joe was whispering.

    'My
stepmom, Edie Kiglatuk? She'd like a word.'

    'Go
ahead and put her on,' Derek said. He always enjoyed talking to Edie and he was
conscious, after the Samwillie Brown case, that he owed her.

    'Can
she call you at the end of the day?' Interference again. Some technical problem
at the Autisaq end was jigging the connection; it was getting hard to hear the
kid.

    Derek
said: 'But everything's OK, right?'

    Joe
said: 'Business as usual.'

    They
signed off and Derek Palliser went back to his paperwork. Something about the
conversation with Joe began to gnaw at him. He had an idea that Edie was going
to bring up the Wagoner affair. Why else would she contact him?

    The
remainder of the morning passed uneventfully. At lunchtime, Derek went to the
store, bought three packs of instant ramen noodles and sat at his desk eating
them while Stevie went back home for lunch with his family. Afterwards,
Palliser made coffee and checked briefly on his lemmings. The weather had
perked up since the early morning; the sun now blazed through thin, high cirrus
and it was a balmy -25C, perfect for a trip out on the land.

    He'd see
if he could finish his paperwork in time to go for an evening ride to the
polynya at Inuushuck cove. A pod of beluga had holed up, taking advantage of
the clear water to rest before carrying on their travels. He'd seen bear tracks
there and was curious to know if the animal had returned.

    As he
was thinking, the door to the snow porch swung open and Derek could hear the
sound of boots being stamped to rid them of ice. A few moments later, Stevie
appeared.

    'Good
lunch, D?' He spotted the empty ramen packets and tried to change the subject.
'Turning out to be a great day.' He walked across the office and peered behind
the Venetian blinds. 'I thought, with the weather being so soft and all, we'd
set up the barbecue for supper. The kids would love it if you came too.'

    'Thanks.'
It was so obviously a mercy call. Stevie meant well, but being pitied by your
own constable, that sucked. 'I'm real busy with this research, though. Next
time, eh?'

    'Oh
sure, D.'

    They
passed the afternoon in administrative duties. At five, Stevie rose from his
desk and said he was going round to post the notices about wandering dogs and
knock on a few doors to spread the word. After he'd gone, Palliser went back to
his quarters on the southern side of the constabulary building, took off his
uniform, heaved on his Polartec all-in-one, pulled his sealskin suit over the
top, threw on a few pairs of mittens and some hats and made his way out to his
snowmobile.

    It
was one of those beautiful, crystal-clear Arctic evenings where everything
seemed picked out in its own spotlight. The sky was an unimpeachable blue and
before him stretched a fury of tiny ice peaks, unblemished by leads. In the
distance the dome-shaped berg, which had bedded into the surrounding pack for
the winter, glowed furiously turquoise.

    Derek
took his vehicle through the path he had cleared back in January when the ice
had finally settled. As he picked up speed, he felt first the freezing of his
eyelashes, then the hairs in his nose. Even with his snow goggles on, tiny ice
boulders began to accrete in the corners of his eyes. He enjoyed the feeling of
encroachment, of being willingly and haplessly besieged by nature. A raven flew
across his Night line and for the first time that day he felt content, even
happy. Out on the land he forgot the radio conversation he'd had with Joe
Inukpuk, the small-town stir-ups. He forgot Stevie Killik's well-meaning but
humiliating pity, forgot Misha and best of all, he forgot he was a cur, a mixed
blood, someone fashioned at the borders out of the scraps no one else wanted.

    He
reached the edge of the floe that marked the start of the open water of the
polynya. Here the ice began to feel wetter, not quite yet unreliable, but
deserving of caution and, leaving his snowbie, he proceeded on foot across
patchy floe running between leads. It was dangerous ground, but Derek had
enough experience to know when to take particular care. The conditions required
his total concentration and he thought of nothing more until he reached the
edge of the ice, where it gave out to clear, moving water, the restlessness of
the currents beneath ensuring that it stayed ice-free all year round and, as a
result, attracted zooplankton, then char, seal, orca and beluga, all the way up
the food chain to polar bear. He wanted just to take a look at the beluga.

    Derek
hadn't hunted whale himself in a very long time. There was a good reason for
that. Some years back he'd set up camp on the beach at Jakeman Fiord. Exploring
the immediate area, he'd come upon a stretch of temporarily opened water at the
foot of a fiord. Mistaking the water for a polynya, where the water was open
all year round, a pod of young, inexperienced beluga had gathered. As the water
had begun to solidify, they had taken it in turns to swim about and edge away
the ice with their noses. As the ice crept further and further in, so their
attempts to clear it became more frantic. The splashing eventually attracted a
large male bear. Each time the beluga rose from the water to breathe, the bear
harried them with his paws. By the time the bear had managed to drag a young
beluga out onto the ice, the others, wounded and weak, were completely trapped
as all around them the water turned to bloody ice.

    Derek
had never been able to see beluga again after that without something in him
reaching out to them. It was this feeling of protectiveness that had brought
him out to the polynya today, though the likelihood of this lot sharing the
fate of those others was small, because the polynya opened out to deep-sea
waters way out from the shoreline. Not so long ago, bears would have followed
their prey out that far, part swimming, part jumping from floe to floe, but in
the past four or five years the breakup had come so early that the great white
hunters could no longer rely on their old ice routes and were wary of getting
themselves stranded out in the open ocean. In the short term this was good for
whales, bad for bears. In the long term, it was just bad.

    Derek
reached the edge of the water and waited a while but nothing stirred on the
surface and it was with a sense of relief that he realized the belugas had
moved on. Returning to Kuujuaq he was overcome with a feeling of melancholy.
Not for the first time in his life, he wished he'd had the opportunity to go to
college and study some aspect of Arctic zoology. He would have been happier as
a naturalist than he was as a policeman, he thought, as he stuck the kettle on.

    He
looked around the little apartment and thought about Stevie's invitation. Next
time he'd go.